AHMEDABAD: Amarsinh Chavda, a 64-year-old retired bank official, has filed his nomination from the Maninagar constituency. However, this Sola resident has not ventured out even once into the constituency to campaign against his rival — chief minister Narendra Modi. Chavda is contesting elections only to create a remarkable, even if futile, moment in his personal history so that he can later say he dared to contest against Modi!

Chavda, who is an RTI activist, has filed his nomination on a Bharatiya Janata Dal ticket. He confesses that he is supporting the Congress candidate Shweta Bhatt, the wife of suspended IPS official Sanjiv Bhatt. "Why should I lie? I am not really canvassing. I filed my nomination so that if someday somebody asks who I lost the elections to, I can say it was Modi," he says.

Fourteen candidates have filed their nominations from the Maninagar constituency. One of them, the Gujarat Parivartan Party (GPP) candidate, has already withdrawn his nomination in support of Shweta Bhatt.

Others are mostly common people who have taken on the BJP giant for reasons ranging from the eccentric to the idealistic. Paresh Shukla is the only independent candidate from Maninagar. This rickshaw driver says that he decided to fight Modi on the directives of none other than Lord Shiva. "Lord Shiva gave me a darshan in my dream and asked me to take on Modi," says Shukla, a widower and a father of two daughters.

Pawan Makan is the candidate of the Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha. "Modi is a man of masks. His image as the poster-boy of Hindutva is fake as he has never completely supported the cause of Hindus," says Makan, a 34-year-old cloth trader.

Jagdish Merchant, a chemical engineer, is contesting against Modi as a candidate of the Samajwadi Party. "I had approached Rahul Gandhi with a 'Rahul Gandhi Empowerment Scheme' and was hoping I would get a chance to contest on the Congress ticket," says Merchant. "When I received no response, I accepted the SP candidature."

Another candidate Dinesh Patel — an associate professor residing in Anand — says he wants to make the poor know the real Modi. "He is partial to rich businessmen," Patel says.